In the ruins of a luxurious villa overlooking the Bay of Naples at Civita Giuliana, half a mile northwest of Pompeii, archaeologists recently discovered the remains of two men killed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. The researchers were able to create highly accurate casts of the men’s bodies, including details of the clothing they wore while trying to flee the surge of superheated gas and ash that raced through their home on the eruption’s second morning. One man, who showed signs of having performed repetitive physical labor, was between 18 and 25 years of age and wore a short wool tunic. The other was between 30 and 40 and wore both a wool tunic and a mantle, perhaps indicating that he was of higher status.

A child belonging to the Hohokam culture who died in southern Arizona’s Sonoran Desert 500 to 1,000 years ago appears to have been fed a special diet in the final weeks of life that included hundreds of saguaro cactus flowers. Partially mummified remains of the child, who died at the age of five or six of unknown causes, were recovered in the early 1940s. Starting in the 1980s, Karl Reinhard, an environmental archaeologist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, analyzed fossilized excrement, called coprolites, found inside the mummy. He has learned that the child ate saguaro cactus fruit, flour made from ground mesquite pods, and cholla or prickly pear cactus buds, all of which are well-known staples still eaten in the region. Consumption of saguaro flowers, which come from a cactus sacred to the Hohokam, however, was previously undocumented in the area.

In the 1990s, the child’s mummy was returned to the Tohono O’odham Nation, who live in the region today, and Reinhard has consulted with the tribal council regarding his study of the coprolites. Recently, a team led by Reinhard reexamined microscopic residues of one of the coprolites using scanning electron microscopy and identified a quantity of saguaro cactus pollen equivalent to more than 200 flowers. Harvesting these flowers, which grow high up on the cacti amid sharp needles, would have required significant effort—saguaro cacti often reach 40 feet in height. This suggests to Reinhard that the child was accorded compassionate palliative treatment as he or she neared death. “We have a lot of thought going into what to feed this child,” he says.

When researchers discovered the burial of an individual interred with stone implements and projectile points at Wilamaya Patjxa, a site in southern Peru occupied by hunter-gatherers some 9,000 years ago, they had little doubt as to the role the deceased had played while alive. “It was clear that the tools buried with this individual reflected a hunter’s toolkit,” says archaeologist Randy Haas of the University of California, Davis. Initially, the team assumed the hunter was a high-status male, but osteological analysis and a new technique that examines differences between X and Y chromosome versions of a particular gene in tooth enamel determined that the remains actually belonged to a young woman. According to Haas, the division between men as hunters and women as foragers often described in ethnographies of hunter-gatherer groups may not have been so rigid in Paleolithic societies. “When there was a lot of big game, both men and women would have focused their effort on these resources, which gave you a lot of bang for your buck,” he says. When these animals became less plentiful and diets became more diverse, Haas explains, communal hunts involving all capable adults may have gradually given way to gender-based specialization.